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Spirit Beast Round-Up

Blizzard has been adding Spirit Beasts to World of Warcraft since the Spirit Beast family was added at the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

But because they’ve only added one for each major patch — and there have only been four major patches in the Lich King era — we only have four Spirit Beasts.

Now four beasts isn’t a lot to keep track of … but on the other hand, four also isn’t too hard to overlook. I get a decent amount of e-mail from newer or returning hunters asking me, “What’s up with the see-through bear?” Or, “Have you seen that weird blue wolf?”

(Often, these helpful souls are writing to let me know that I am missing a pet, because that weird blue wolf is nowhere to be seen on the Petopia wolf page …)

But I actually quite enjoy these e-mails. First off, they mean that when I am missing something, someone will probably let me know sooner or later. And secondly, it means I get to introduce someone to a new Spirit Beast!

So let’s take a moment to round up our four spirit beasties, shall we?

Loque’nahak

Loque’nahak, he of the ridiculously hard to pronounce name, is the original Spirit Beast. He’s been haunting the edges of Sholazar Basin since we players first set foot in Northrend.

Loque is also known as the Mate of Har’koa and shares an appearance with that leopard goddess. Calling them both cat-like is akin to calling a Lamborghini vehicle-like: technically accurate, but it doesn’t begin to capture their sleek beauty.

Loque is a man of mystery: We don’t know if he is also a loa of some sort, like Harkoa. We don’t know if he is Harkoa’s only mate or part of a harem. We don’t know how he became the mate of a goddess when he’s only level 76, or what he’s doing so far away from her home in Zul’Drak.

(And please, no questions about the logistics of their relationship! The disparity in their sizes is very much a private matter and none of our business.)

Gondria

Our second Spirit Beast is also cat-like, although in this case that description is extremely apt. Gondria, level 77, is a spectral version of the Frostsaber Pride Watcher. He appeared in Zul’Drak in Patch 3.1.

Gondria is sometimes known as the STD cat due to his unfortunate name. Personally I call him the vertigo cat because being able to see the stripes on both sides of his body at the same time makes me dizzy. (And by the way, it’s spelled gonorrhea.)

His most striking features are his brightly glowing aqua eyes, which shine through his spectral body from all angles.

Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any lore concerning Gondria. One wonders why he, rather than Loque’nahak, is hanging out in Zul’Drak so close to Harkoa ….

Skoll

Next up on our grand tour of Spirit Beasts is Skoll, also known as the blue lightning wolf.

Skoll first appeared in the Storm Peaks in Patch 3.2. He was the first Spirit Beast that didn’t look anything like a cat, which caused some confusion since the secondary family skill of Spirit Beasts is Prowl — a traditional WoW cat skill.

He’s also naturally level 80, the highest level Spirit Beast. I tell you, if Skoll has Furious Howl instead of Prowl he’d be the undisputed belle of the ball right now.

Although Skoll is apparently a spectral beast — the internal name of his model is ‘spectralsaberworg’ — he appears quite solid to the eyes. But blue isn’t exactly a normal color for saber worg, even if he shares his basic shape with those wolves. And most wolves aren’t covered with flickering lightning …

Skoll is actually the only Spirit Beast I’ve ever tamed on Mania — largely because he’s the only Spirit Beast I’ve ever seen on Mania.

Arcturis

And finally we come to Arcturis, the see-through bear introduced in Patch 3.3. Arcturis is the lowest level Spirit Beast at level 74. He is well-suited to his home in Grizzly Hills, a zone he shares with five other colors of bear.

Arcturis is unique among them, however, not just because he is a Spirit Beast (and see-through) but also because he is a maned bear, similar to the druid bear form. (Thankfully he doesn’t sport either the horns or those silly ears …)

Like Gondria, Arcturis has striking, glowing eyes. Unlike Gondria, much of his spectral light is concentrated in his head and neck so his eyes are not nearly so eerie. On the other hand, that means that his rump is almost entirely transparent.

The name Arcturis may be related to that of the star Arcturus, which in Greek mythology guarded the nearby constellations Ursa major and Ursa minor — humans transformed by Zeus first into bears and then into constellations in order to protect them from tragedies that were his fault to begin with. Zeus was like that.

Spirit Beast Notes

A couple of completely random tidbits about Spirit Beasts …

Despite the fact that all four Spirit Beasts look rather different, they all share the same family skills: Spirit Strike and Prowl. Spirit Strike is akin to the druid spell Moonfire, and quite appropriate for a Spirit Beast. But Prowl, which is shared with the cat family, is probably an artifact of the fact that Loque’nahak and Gondria, the first of the Spirit Beasts, look pretty cat-like.

All four Spirit Beasts are rare and elite, although none of them pose a particular challenge to tame once you find them. All four are also non-aggressive — they’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone. It’s unknown at this time if they are also more afraid of you than you are of them.

Killing Loque’nahak counts towards the achievements Northern Exposure and Frostbitten. Thankfully the other three Spirit Beasts do not count towards these achievements — which makes them just a tad easier to find since you generally aren’t competing with camping non-hunters who want to kill them. But none of the Spirit Beasts are exactly easy to locate.

And finally, a word of advice: Any of the four Spirit Beasts can make an excellent and rewarding pet for a high-level hunter. But if you go hunting them … make absolutely certain that you have the 51-point Beast Mastery talent required to tame exotic pets — or that you can swap specs to get it quickly – or you will be very, very sad when you eventually find your Spirit Beast.

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15 thoughts on “Spirit Beast Round-Up”

Five bucks and a box of donuts says that non-hunters kill the other three spirit beasts anyway. They probably either don’t know better or are just plain mean. NOT that I’ve ever seen anyone kill Loq and taunt us in Sholazar, oh no. >.<

Skoll also makes noise, if you crank your volume up high enough, a low-level crackling of electricity. Fortunately it’s not so loud that it becomes a distraction, at least for me I can’t even hear it over normal game noise at the volumes I run and I’ve got fairly sensitive hearing. :-)

And as for killing Loque, I’m not even looking at that Frostbitten achievement until Cata hits and not only distracts hunters with new rare spawns to tame but also hopefully adds in more spirit beasts. Even then I’d probably still check for hunters in the zone. Yeah, I’m never getting that achievement. >-< lol

Very nice roundup. I am a new hunter (just hit L74) and have been MM speceed up ’till now. I really want Arcturis and so have respecced 51 BM. I’ll dual spec so that I can have the advantages of both at some point. I’ve been camping the spawn spot as much as I can, work and life allowing, but haven’t seen him so far. I’ll be one happy hunter if one day I could bag him.

Non-hunters either kill the Spirit Beasts expecting them to be on the list, kill them expecting a nice loot reward (“It’s a rare! It should have blue loot”), kill them just to spite every hunter in the zone, or try to break the nearest hunter’s bank by trying to “sell the spawn”… aka threaten to kill it anyway. Even some hunters are guilty of the last two, especially if they hate the BM spec or have one tamed.

Ive been double lucky by literally tripping over Loque’s tail on my Draenei, and Gondria on my Blood Elf hunter. I’ve also met Arcturis the same way when on my pally alt and made the only hunter in the zone at the time very happy. /who + private tell = uncamped spirit bear.

If Skoll had howl instead of prowl, then I would have searched for him back when I needed a raiding wolf. Instead the cute little barking puppy from Mulgore had that honour.

It’s really sad that almost all the vids on the net of people showing off these gorgeous four are made without the ingame sounds. I only know of one from BigRedKitty that had combat sound. Their looks are only half their beauty, the growling sounds they make in combat are absolutely chilling. The two cats have a lovely deep, dark and resonating roar, and I’m sure the other two have had the same love from the sound department.

I got lucky and tumbled over Skoll 3 days after he was introduced to us. I had a habit of fly over that spot to get to the ice chick dailies. I saw a yellow dot and was like wtf is that. O_O OMFGSKOLL SDKJNFSDKJFS I was literally shaking while I tamed him and screen capped the whole thing.

Arcturis on the other hand I camped for weeks. Finally got him late one night after coming back from afk. lol

Now I’m about to hunter Loque on my Belf hunter since I think he’d look hot with her. :D

But I really, really wish they just made Spirit Beasts extremely rare, BM-only-tame-able versions of the regular pet families.

Rather than 4 pets that do the same thing, it would make much more sense if Skoll was a special wolf, Arcturis a special bear, Loque a special cat…(Godria is the most meh of the group so I’d vote for a replacement from another pet family).

As it is now, I take a dps hit for being specced BM, and then another for using a spirit beast pet.

I think this was one of your ideas for improvement, Mania, and I’d love to see it happen.

I have tamed all 4 spirit beasts on Dunemaul and Arcturis on Eitrigg. I had two methods for finding them. Park and logout method: park you hunter above the spawn point and log into another toon. Check back every hour or so. Farm and sweep method: Farm the area (I’m a miner/engineer) and make a sweep ever so often to see if they have spawned. Using these two methods I have never spent more than 4 days camping for a spirit beast.

Hey guys! I am a sad, sad hunter. lol! I have been searching for Loque and just cannot find him no matter how long I linger in his zone. Does anyone have any tips for catching this rare beast? If Blizz would make his mate tameable, it would be so much easier since they look alike anyway. Looking for these rare spawns really slows my leveling, as you can imagine. Thanks for any help. Now, I shall return to the land I have grown quite tired of as I search for Loque. =)

There really is no trick to taming them, Milli. You just have to camp or be really lucky.

I personally have Skoll and Gondria. I have been camping and hunting all four for a long time with only partial luck. It seems to be a little easier now that Cata has hit and people are camping the new rares but with the low spawn rate, it’s still hard as hell to get these beauties.